This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Bad Science Ends in Court
I learned to love science when I started working with a former RCMP toxicologist in my last year of law school. One of the nice things about DUI law is there is a lot of science, and as my career continued, I discovered there is a lot of bad science backing the assumptions police and prosecutors urge upon the courts. Bad science gets published. It gets funded. It gets defended with remarkable confidence. Most of the time, it only collapses when someone starts asking probing questions.
Here are three weird and wacky law stories where science wandered into the legal system and did not enjoy the experience.
The Scientist Who Went to Prison Over Rabbit Blood
Dong-Pyou Han was working on an HIV vaccine. The results looked incredible.
So incredible, that he helped them along by adding human antibodies to rabbit blood samples. On paper, the vaccine triggered a strong immune response. In reality, it was just human blood doing human blood things.
His fake results helped him secure about $19 million in U.S. government research funding. At its best, scientists are ethical. They publish their results, and other scientists can either confirm or refute their results. But when there are millions of dollars of research money on the line, there is a motivation to fake results. In this case, other scientists couldn’t replicate the work. That’s when the questions started.
This didn’t end with a stern letter or a quiet resignation. Federal prosecutors charged him with making false statements. He pleaded guilty. A judge sent him to prison for nearly five years.
It takes real effort to turn academic misconduct into jail time. Han managed it with a syringe and a very bad idea.
The Honesty Professor Accused of Cheating
Francesca Gino made her career studying honesty. She investigated why people lie and how they justify it as well as how to reduce cheating. One would think someone who studies honesty would understand the importance of honesty and the importance of scientific ethics.
Other academics started checking Gino’s numbers. Not the conclusions. The numbers themselves seemed too neat and apparently they didn’t behave like real data. They appeared made up. Harvard opened an investigation and journals started pulling the papers. Eventually, Harvard did something universities almost never do, they fired a tenured professor.
Gino denied everything and sued for tens of millions of dollars. She alleged breach of contract, defamation and discrimination.
There is something deeply unsettling about an expert on ethical behaviour fighting for her career in court over allegations of unethical research.
One pattern we often see with hindsight is that the people who hold themselves out as the most ethical often have some more egregious moral or ethical failings.
Cancer Research, Photoshop, and the False Claims Act
This one isn’t about a lone rogue scientist.
A major cancer research institute affiliated with Harvard paid fifteen million dollars to settle allegations that manipulated images were used in federally funded cancer research. The case was brought under the False Claims Act, US legislation designed to ensure the government gets what it paid for.
In this case there were duplicated and altered images appearing in published studies and grant applications. A whistleblower documented the issues. Soon after federal lawyers showed up.
No one went to jail but reputations took a hit and some settlement money was paid.
When research depends on public money, bad science stops being an internal problem. It becomes a legal one.
The Sad Pattern
These stories ended differently. One man went to prison. A professor lost her tenured position. An institution paid a great deal of money. Underneath, though, they are the same story. Scientific ethics were compromised for status and greed.
Science likes to say it self-corrects, but I think this is an idealistic view. Our courts have occasionally opined that our justice system is always improving through evolution. The basic claim here is the same mechanism, asserting that it’s keeping the system pure.
To me both assertions are naive. Standard human motivations often seem to come before ethics. The façade of scientific integrity and integrity in many other fields usually peels away for the same reasons, that is, a desire for status, greed, (and sexual gratification that many assume will accompany fame and wealth).
Self-correction is an idealistic view. Evolution falsely implies improvement. Operating on assumptions about self-correction and linear improvement through evolution means we generate a vulnerability that creates an invitation for abuse.
See you next Wednesday.
